The Politics of Dancing

  East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£20). I. Most historical events inevitably diminish in impact with the passage of time. Not so with the Holocaust, which, certainly in my own case, the impact has grown in scale and horror as I have grown older, and others have told me of a similar response. That this should be is so is not hard to fathom. The steady process from petty indignities to the mass delegitimization, increased humiliation, ostracization, and eventual murder, the attempted genocide, of an entire race of people happened on the European continent, in one of the most literate and cultured nation states, within living memory. Men, women, and children were rounded up, marched into nearby woods or wasteland, and shot, to be thrown into ditches they had been forced to dig. Later the process involved herding jews into ghettos, starving, and then stuffing them into cattle trucks and transporte...